Legal Recruiting · Pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania lateral market, in the numbers firms publish.

We track every opening Pennsylvania law firms post publicly, and the salary ranges they publish with them. Here is what the market looks like right now, and what it means if you are weighing a move.

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Open demand

What Pennsylvania firms are hiring for today

Openings posted publicly by law firms with Pennsylvania offices (July 2026). Postings only show you the visible market; many searches, especially at partner level, never get posted at all.

640

Open law-firm postings

324

Attorney roles (associate)

271

Litigation openings

Philadelphia pays like New York's neighbor. Pennsylvania posts one of the largest dockets in the country, and Philadelphia's corporate seats now advertise ranges within reach of Manhattan. Litigation still carries the volume, split between Philadelphia's mass tort docket and Pittsburgh's energy and health systems work.

Source: Voll Recruiting analysis of publicly posted law-firm openings, July 2026.

Practice areas

Where the demand concentrates

Posted openings by practice area. If your practice sits in a deep column, you have options; if it sits in a thin one, timing and positioning matter more, and that is exactly the situation a recruiter earns their keep in.

Litigation

271 openings

Corporate / transactional

79 openings

Intellectual property

58 openings

Source: Voll Recruiting analysis of publicly posted law-firm openings, July 2026.

Published pay

What Pennsylvania postings are offering

Salary ranges taken directly from current public postings. Ranges like these are the floor of a negotiation, not the ceiling; knowing where a specific firm actually lands is the part we do for a living.

Role	Firm · location	Experience	Posted range
M&A associate	Hogan Lovells Cadwalader · Philadelphia	4 to 6 years	$260,000 – $390,000

Source: Salary ranges published in public law-firm job listings, July 2026.

The part postings can't show you

The best Pennsylvania moves are rarely the posted ones.

A posting tells you a seat exists. It does not tell you which groups are quietly building, which firms flex on class year, or where your book and background put you at the front of the line. That is the read we give every Pennsylvania attorney we work with, confidentially, before anything is sent anywhere.

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